Hopes and Dreams (12 days)

That’s a pretty vague title isn’t it. Looking at it now, it even seems a little ominous to me. Weird no? I mean their all nice words and I know I don’t have anything bad to say. Yet it still sends a chill down my spine. Like I’ve just raised a flag or something… Ok so I chose a gif of Komaeda, that’s on me.

I guess hopes and dreams are too grand a statement here. What I really mean is “general non committal goals for my blog”. That just didn’t have the same ring to it. Ok, ok. I’ll get to the point already… Considering it’s the end of the year, you probably guessed it, I want to talk about what I want to do with this place. *I think of my blog as a place, I’m not sure why*

nice blog!

I’ve looked back on my previous posts on the subject (there are a lot) and found them utterly unhelpful. It’s like I’m allergic to giving myself clear objectives! I’m always sort of wishy washy. On top of that, my big ideas are not impressive at all. Whatever happened to dream big!?! Granted I have never been disappointed but now I got nothing to brag about. All the amazing things I can credit to this blog were mostly due to you guys.

It’s about time I played my part. So here I am taking a chance. I’m going to actually try to do some stuff. If I fail you can tease me about it. That’s what friends do.

First, let’s start with the easy promises:

I’m going to keep posting every day. Since late summer 2017, I haven’t missed a day and I’m going to do everything I can to keep that up. I also want to throw something out there. I don’t necessarily think a heavy posting schedule is in any way better than occasionally posting when the muse strikes you or taking your time to really work out essays. I personally thrive in consistency but it’s not for everyone.

some people enjoy repetitiveness (some people being me!)

Also, I would love to finally get a handle of comment conversations. I have a tough time figuring out when someone actually wants to discuss something versus when they just want to get something off their chests and don’t have the time or energy for a long exchange. A few bloggers I really like usually stick to short neutral polite responses and that seems to be the most appreciated. I get a bit wrapped up in the moment and may be overwhelming at times.

I should do these but no promises:

My blog is getting a little cluttered. I will soon have in the 4 digit posts and only a small percentage of them are reviews. I really want to find a way to organize the material and make it easier to find for readers. Maybe some type of thematic index would be in order. (I also need to revisit my tags).

Even though I wrote a post about it, I still haven’t quite mastered social media. And by master, I mean learned how to use… I can probably use Twitter and Facebook way better and I haven’t even looked into other platforms. I have a feeling that if I can figure out instagram or Reddit, I’ll be rolling in… random click through with no engagement…YAY!

I said YAY

Better theme. Oh vanity will be the death of me. At least I’ll leave a beautiful corpse! I like my theme. It took me a long time to pick out and meets all my criteria. But it is heavy. I’ve had readers DM me a few times about it being occasionally long to load, so I’ll look into it again.

Things I want to try…

I told you all about media kits and their potential. That post was purely theoretical, I have yet to test one out. But first, I need to simply put one together. I m not sure if I would even use it, but for some reason, I feel like just creating one will be a good exercise.

Some of you may remember that I use to have this feature called a blogwarming. I wanted to spread the word about newer or lesser known blogs. Unfortunately, when a few bloggers started similar roundup and showcase features that were frankly better put together, my own project couldn’t keep up and submissions dried out. I was sad but it also thought me a few important lessons.

One of my biggest mistakes was to ask for email submissions. Twitter is a much more dynamic and easier venue for this. However, when thinking back, asking for submissions at all was a misstep. If we are dealing with newer or a little lesser known bloggers, they are often less likely to regularly interact with the community. They would probably never hear of my little project, let alone go through the trouble of figuring out how to contact me. I had structured it that way because I’m lazy and I was hoping great new blogs would just come to me. In retrospect, I should really have structured it like a roundup post and just shared with all of you the great new blogs I discover. And that’s exactly what I m going to do. I’m aiming for a monthly feature if I can discover blogs regularly enough. It will be a surprise blogwarming if you will. If you discover any blogs you think should be featured, of course let me know.

I like your blog!!!

I also want to generally put the dozens of hours I spend reading blogs each week to some use. I asked Prattle’s permission and I’m going to try a very pared down version of their concept. Basically, I want to put together a weekly round up of seasonal episodic reviews from around wordpress. If you’re like me, when you get into a show (*cough S;G 0, cough*), you want to read what everyone else is saying right away, to extend and share in the experience. So it could be useful to have those posts gathered by show in a single spot.

You don’t know this, because I haven’t shared it yet, but I applied and got accepted as a blogger for a couple of professional sites in 2018. For various reasons I chose not to pursue those opportunities. This said I would still love to diversify and occasionally venture out of my little space. I’ll see what I can do.

I want to get some funkey search terms in 2019!!! No idea how to go about it..?

I m not sure how many of these I will accomplish. Maybe none. Maybe I’ll get sidetracked by a new spark if inspiration and pursue something completely different with this blog. How about you guys? Any big plans? Relaxing is a great plan for example!

21 Responses

Posting everyday for a year and a half is insane! It’s awesome, but totally insane. I’ve managed almost two months now and that’s mostly because I’ve had a couple of month long challenges. I’m tempted to try to keep it going, but I may need to come up with some ideas pretty quickly…

I did a post but it’s not that informative. I keep a notebook where i write down every potential idea and eventually get to all of them. I write about everything that strikes me that’s even remotely anime related

I haven’t even been reading blog posts since around the 23rd, and here you are posting every day and trying to find new ways of being even busier. Even if you can schedule posts ahead, maintaining a comments section is not something you can pre-schedule, and it also has some sort of expiry date (i.e. forum posts rise to the top with the last comment, blog posts disappear from page one according to post-date).

I’m personally always up for a discussion, and it’s also nearly impossible to offend or hurt me by disagreement, but given that I don’t use subscription features and blogs aren’t comment-centred, I might miss a late reply, or might get distracted by real life. Or there might be a reply after the arbitrary cut-off period when I no longer check a blog post for new replies. So silence in my case, especially if someone were hoping for a reply, is usually not deliberate and targeted: it’s that my web habits and blog structure make it hard for me to engage in discussions that are more stop-and-go. (A forum post would rise to the top again, asking for attention.)

A latest-reply feature might help somewhat with that, but no longer on blogs like yours that post daily and have multiple replies per post. Comments just drop off the side-bar far too quickly for the feature to make a difference. (It’s also why I don’t often reply to blog posts: too worried about missing follow-ups.)

No high priority anyway. A last-comment side-bar is better than nothing, but with the amount of comments you’re getting it’s not that useful. The links to your older posts, and to other people’s posts are certainly more useful.

Also, it’s good to be back, though it’s not quite New Year’s yet, so some outage might still be coming.

I’d like to possibly put my heart into more intensive projects like the LN bingo I did last February (!!!). Yomu put up his collab idea not too long ago as I type this, so maybe that might happen, but otherwise…I have zero ideas for 2019.

I think of my blog as a book (metaphorically) and a place – “an internet archive of my anime/manga experiences”, I’d call it.

I’ve seen some themes with coloured circles around the blog’s author’s icon and those tend to be pretty easy convos to follow. Of course, what works for me might not work for everyone though…

I would definitely say your blog theme takes a while to load, which isn’t the handiest thing when you’re busy or have a bunch of tabs open in Chrome and threaten to crash the browser…which I tend to do when I want to compile a round-up post.

I try to find at least one obscure blog for each of my round-ups which I’d want to recommend to others, based on the writing in one or two posts. The blogs’re often dead, which is a real shame, but they’re a good way to start your new version of “blogwarming”. The only problem with the Prattle episodic format is that my writing tends to get glossed over when people compile posts like that, since my writing style (broad strokes which generally tend to represent the series as a whole) isn’t compatible with the idea of “episodic”.

To me compilations posts have always been rather difficult because you can’t feature everything but unless you have clear cut rules, it’s difficult to leave anything out without making it seem like you consider the post lacking in some way.

I’ve got a few plans for next year but I’m really spending the next week kind of hammering out something resembling a plan for 2019. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next year with your blog as whatever you end up doing I’m sure it will be a fun read.

“I’m going to keep posting every day. Since late summer 2017, I haven’t missed a day and I’m going to do everything I can to keep that up.”

That’s impressive as all get out. And it’s not like you post a sentence or two. You’ve been posting in-depth articles! That’s even more impressive.

“Basically, I want to put together a weekly round up of seasonal episodic reviews from around wordpress.”

I like that idea! In addition to Prattle (which you mentioned), several other sites try to draw attention to other sites’ posts, but each has their own approach. 100 Word Anime and Keiko’s Anime Blog, for example, both look for posts that caught their eyes; my site looks for posts consistent with my themes, plus I try to maintain a comprehensive list of all the ani-blogs (but _not_ the Youtubers).

I like your idea of creating what would amount to an index to the seasonal reviews. That’s a new perspective, and I think it’d be a cool addition!

Plus, I say, the more the merrier! Of the four sites we mentioned, it’s rare that there’s any overlap in the articles they call attention to. That means there’s plenty of room for more features like yours!

Personally, I like your site so much that if you maintain the status quo, I’d be happy! But kudos to you for wanting to continue your professional growth! I’m looking forward to what you come up with!

It’s still so weird to hear you say you’ve only been here a year and still learning the ropes, but still have such a nice following. Speaks for your strong personality, and your consistency is a great inspiration.

I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate my writing into my new work schedule. . .I’m enjoying myself too much to relinquish blogging, but this new schedule at work is going to make posting much more challenging.